/lit/ - Literature

>>21061893
>>21061906
I only read what I'm interested in at the moment. Usually I rabbithole down interests, e.g.,
>read mathematics books
>get into Smullyan and Gardner
>get into eastern religion from Smullyan's other works on Taoism
>Want to learn the difference between Taoism and Buddhism
>Siddhartha and Shunryu Suzuki
>Suzuki leads to Allen Watts
>Allen Watts leads to Robert Anton Wilson
>R.A.W. leads to Leary
>Read Eco's work from some offhand comments from one of their books
>Got really into Borges

>Find some Gardner essay compilation books
>Devour them, get into Asimov's nonfiction because they're of a similar style
>Both touch on religion and physics
>Get into Bart Ehrman to learn more about the history of Christianity
>Try some Greene, Krauss, and Sagan as an into to the hard sciences
>Krauss and Sagan lead me to Dawkins
>Dawkins leads me to Hitchens
>Try to balance out Hitchens with Christian and Theist apologetics

>Gardner and Sagan's talk of pseudoscience leads me to a whole bunch of fringe belief books (antigravity, UFO's, chiropracty, etc.)
>Move onto the Kabbalah and Kybellion
>Get weirded out and go to fringe science
>Julian Jaynes and the like

>Asimov's writing style gets me to read more of his fiction
>get into Clarke, Niven, and Dick
>can't get enough Dick
>usually keep some spare Dick on hand in case I get bored
>to this day have Dick compilations on my phone in case I get bored
>From golden sci-fi start reading old sci-fi
>Barsoom and Out of the Silent Planet
>Barsoom gets me to Tarzan
>go from Tarzan to other old adventure series
and so on and so forth. I'm interested in all of these (or at least I was at some point), but this all was in the last four years. Not even coming close to what I read when I was in/just gotten out of college. Sure, none of it was challenging or really deep (inb4 pop-sci pseud), but I just want to know more about the field, not become an expert.

>>21062106
Maybe? I used to hang out with some phD candidates before I moved, and it was always cool to hear what they were learning about in school and working on. Can't afford to go into higher education though. No good colleges nearby.
I don't even want to lecture to people, I just want to have conversations about neat stuff. Awhile back I met a medical researcher and we must have talked for an hour about new technology he was working on to strengthen arteries. Learned a lot about why certain materials are better for that than others.

>>20330556
>Want to learn German
>Start reading, listening, and speaking it
>Realize that even if I were to become fluent I have no one to speak German with
>Don't even have anyone to speak English with unless I go to the store
>fühltSchlecht.jpg

I was told to write a story with only three sentences.
I couldn't.